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Friday, April 5, 2013

Craft Your Own Sandblock Instruments

The finished sandblocks are ready for music class.

Children and or teachers can craft sandblock instruments for their music class, a performance or just for fun. All you will need are blocks of wood, felt and a medium weight sand paper. I used a wood glue to adhere my sandpaper to one side of my wooden tablets after I cut and glued a layer of felt to the wooden blocks. The felt acts as pad to extent the wear of the sandpaper over time. Eventually, you will need to adhere more sandpaper to your instruments as the gritty surface wears down to the felt layer.

The felt pad is sandwiched between the wooden surface and the sandpaper.

I applied a layer of acrylic sealer to the surface of my sandblocks after gluing these vintage pictures onto the top halves of my sample instruments. The acrylic sealer will help to protect the instruments from wear and tear over time. If you would like to make sandblocks like the ones pictured above, you may click on the restored vintage graphics below to download and print the same images that I used for my teacher's samples.